Subjects

Monday, April 1, 2013

Joyce/Tribune Polls - Where Tenure is the Devil

“So you
think job insecurity is what makes me work hard? I want to be an actor. That’s
not an incentive. That’s the thing. See, you take this MBA-style thinking,
right? It’s the problem with ed(education) policy right now, this intrinsically
paternalistic view of problems that are much more complex than that. It’s like
saying a teacher is going to get lazy when they have tenure. A teacher wants to
teach. I mean, why else would you take a shitty salary and really long hours
and do that job unless you really love to do it?” Matt Damon speaking to a
Reason.tv reporter (www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/02/).

Tenure (Hardly Home
Free)

Recently, the
Chicago Tribune coupled (conspired?) with the Joyce Foundation to implement and
report a poll of Chicagoans, which promoted the concept of Charter Schools as
an overwhelming positive educational force for good in the city. The timing of course couldn’t have been
better – given the closing of so many schools, the carefully orchestrated
vacation-absence of the Mayor, and the furious street-rally reaction by the
Chicago Teachers Union. By the way, the
Tribune under-reported that only a few hundred showed up for the protest (of
which nearly 150 were arrested). Nearly
25 – 50% arrested? Now, that’s a story.

Of course,
one group supporting the polling results was Stand For Children, an
organization with deep roots and financial benefits in germinating charter
schools in the city; however, the numbers are twisty for the newspaper and
their charter supporters. In fact, according to the Tribune editorial “an
overwhelming number” of CPS parents are satisfied with their child’s teacher(s)
(26 March 2013). This jumps away from
the script of public school failure the Chicago Tribune and Stand For Children
have been pushing for years. As a
result, the reporting back of results has been subject to some creative revision.

Blaming
teachers themselves has always worked for the Tribune and others, so once again
that old theme is resurrected. “However, that appreciation has limits. The poll found that CPS parents have little
appreciation, nor do we, for leaving teachers who don’t make the grade in the
classroom year after year. More than 6
in 10 respondents (61.7%) believe it’s unfair for a student to have a low-rated
teacher for more than a year. We’re with
the majority…”

Thus, the
Tribune tries to connect a positive response to the state of parents’ feelings
for public education in our city with a negative scenario in order to bend an
outcome. This specific kind of fallacious polling is questioned in a recent
report by Diane Ravitch, which characterizes the Tribune/Joyce poll as a
blatant attempt at “push polling”: a poll
with questions designed to achieve a specific planned objective or
pre-determined conclusions (http://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/26/did-chicago-tribune-and-joyce-foundation-do-push-polling/).

Corporatists,
Charter Schools and the Chicago Tribune constantly disseminate the erroneous
fear/belief that an educator with tenure has the privilege of permanent employment
forever and ever. While most Chicagoans
believe their children have good teachers (according to their own polls), it is
this possibility of evil that the Tribune uses to foment crisis and therefore corporate
takeover of public education.

Want to know
what tenure really is?

Tenure is,
quite simply, a privilege granted to an experienced educator to due process
when or if facing dismissal. In other
words, a teacher who has achieved a position of tenure can no longer be fired
arbitrarily. A tenured teacher may also
deserves a list of reasons, evidence, union representation or, in some cases, a
remediation plan as described by the collective bargaining agreement of a
district. Tenure, by the way, is not a
guarantee against being released from a teaching position. Even tenured teachers can be fired summarily
for cause (section 24-12 of IL School Code).
In such a case, the tenured teacher’s rights include a written notice of
charges and the possibility to request a hearing within ten days. On the other hand, if a charge is considered
to be irremediable (damaging to students, faculty, or the school beyond any
correction), dismissal may be immediate.
In other situations causing the dismissal of a tenured teacher, a
district’s financial constraints may also override the protection of tenure;
that is, if financial concerns or other needs require the loss of classes in a
school, tenured faculty may be released.
Normally this occurs in about 2 per cent of faculty on the national
level annually (Truth About Tenure in Higher Education. www.nea.org/home/33067.html). Finally, unsatisfactory evaluations for
tenured teachers can also result in remediation plans lasting between 90 days
and one year. Collegial mentoring is
provided the tenured teacher in question, and intermittent evaluations then
determine whether the tenured teacher has been remediated or will be
discharged.

The process
to tenure is difficult to attain, purposely, so firing or releasing a tenured
teacher is as difficult as it is to become one.
In the State of Illinois, the probationary period for a teacher to
become tenured at an institution takes four full academic years if first
employed by a school district after January 1, 1998. Besides mentoring and collegial assistance, a
new teacher can expect to be observed formally and informally a number of times
per academic year. Written records of
observations are combined with late-year reviews and observations to generate a
summative evaluation. Even so, failure to achieve growth, take leadership in
curriculum development, adjust to new methodology, demonstrate adequate student
learning, etc., can result in lower evaluations and ultimately dismissal.

While my
neighbors might think the teachers all relax, as Mr. Damon suggests, the opposite
is actually more accurate. Educational
research demonstrates “ Teachers with tenure spend over 50 hours per week
performing work in classrooms, on committees, in curriculum development and
working one-on-one with needy students” (Truth About Higher Education).

In fact,
tenure is more than simply a protection against firing an educator. It is a provision for academic freedom,
including the right to assembly, confront ideas, advance opinion and enter
spirited debate without fear of recrimination.
As early as 1887, the same teachers who struggled with the teaching of Huck
Finn met in Chicago at the National Educators Association maiden conference
to discuss, among many issues, the need for a teachers’ tenure. Huck was, after all, a boy who spit and swore,
not a model for a younger generation of Americans, and pity the foolish and
unprotected teacher who dared express a fondness for the ultimate message of
Twain’s ironic text if the book had offended the local administrator. “New
Jersey became the first state to pass tenure legislation when, in 1910, it
granted fair dismissal rights to college professors. During the suffrage movements of the 1920’s –
when female teachers could be fired for getting married or getting pregnant or
(gasp) wearing pants – such rights were extended to elementary and high school
teachers as well” (www.time.com.nation/article/0,8599,1859505,00.html).
Education and its institutions and its employees are hopefully a safe haven
from political and current popular whimsy.

In some
states, tenure has been replaced with renewable contracts (Oregon) and
rehabilitation for under-achieving teachers.
Several other states have eliminated the term altogether, but they have
maintained the due-process that is associated with the term tenure ( from the
Latin to hold or keep).

Finally,
radio pundits and street corner philosophers may grumble that tenure has
injured education; however, considerable numbers of educators and academics
also warn that lower test scores and unacceptable graduation rates have little
to do with tenure; rather, under-funded districts, economic downturns, familial
crises, and wrong-headed emphasis on reductionism/testing have been responsible
for the maladies of the modern classroom.

About Me

I am a retiree, political activist, social advocate and community volunteer. I taught at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange for 34 years in the Language Arts classroom and worked as an administrator for several years. My current avocations include various community outreach and assistance programs. Having benefitted from employment in a collegial, reflective teaching environment that encouraged dedication and professionalism, I continue to seek the promotion of education at all levels as a long-term effort combining talent, perseverance, commitment, and constant professional growth - not a blind adherence to a business model of measured production.

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